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AND 



Education 



BY 



GEN. JOHN EATON, LL.D 

Ex.-U. S. Commissioner of Education 



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PHILADELPHIA 

THE PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 
AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK 



1898 



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This address was delivered as a discourse before the Com- 
missioners to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church 
in the U. S. A., Winona Lake, Indiana, May 29th, 1898. 




THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES AND 
EDUCATION. 

BY 

Gen, JOHN EATON, LL. D., 

EX-U. S. COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION. 



The celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth 
Anniversary of the Westminster Assembly may well 
include the consideration of the Presbyterian Churches 
and Education ; for 

First, education prepared the members of the As- 
sembly for the formulation of their remarkable utter- 
ances; second, Presbyterian Churches have existed 
since, by reason of the education of their members 
in these truths. 

We can neither pause to dwell on the scope in- 
tended in the use of the term Presbyterian Churches, 
nor to discuss the definition of Education. Only so 
much 'of the opinions or character of any present 
generation can continue in the future as may be con- 
veyed by education. Presbyterian Churches are such 
only by reason of their distinctive belief and conduct ; 
the only means of their perpetuity is education ; they 
must educate or perish; they must preserve their 

213 



214 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 

purity and soundness by education or become cor- 
rupted and change their character ; they must pre- 
possess mind by right education or it may be given 
such a twist by error that the truth cannot reach the 
soul through which the Holy Spirit operates for con- 
version and sanctification. 

The felicitous phrase used by George Peabody, 
" Education, a debt due from present to future gener- 
ations/' which he so far repaid in the gift of his mil- 
lions, for Presbyterian Churches must mean more 
than the gift of wealth — must mean all they can 
accomplish by the gift of wealth, by prayers and 
worship, by preaching and teaching, and by the force 
of example in educating future generations in their 
beliefs and form of w r orship. This power of educa- 
tion is incomparably the greatest in youth : " As the 
twig is bent, the tree is inclined." Then habits, a 
second nature, are formed ; then man is impressible 
as clay, but after he has passed through the heat of 
experience, change is difficult, as pottery can only be 
changed by breaking. Indeed, education is the 
greatest power intrusted to man. By it he masters 
himself and shapes the characters of his fellows, and 
gains the science and skill by which he, for his use 
and purposes, increases the beauty of flowers, im- 
proves the fruit of the trees, controls animals, fills 
valleys and removes mountains, invokes the power 
of chemical affinity and of steam, commands the 
lightning, and transforms the rudeness of nature to 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESSES. 215 

his comfort and pleasure. God alone creates, but 
/ education, next in power to creation, God shares with 
man, and imposes upon him the duty of performing 
his part. In discharging his responsibility, man 
opposes a plan of his own to that of God. In man's 
plan, he seeks his own end ; God's plan is complete, 
man's imperfect or partial ; God's plan requires the 
surrender of the human will ; to this man objects. 
Doing his best unaided, man is conscious of two dis- 
couraging facts : the one that he comes short of real- 
izing his own best thought, and the other, that for 
his wrong-doing sacrifice is needed, and his reason 
does not disclose iiow that required sacrifice is pro- 
vided. 

Never before has so much attention been given to 
education as now. Assyria and Babylon preserve in 
their ruins some indication of their systems. Egypt 
tells of its culture by its pyramids and the winding 
sheets of its dead ; Greece reveals its excellence in 
art, and Rome in law. Their religion was the cen- 
tral thought and force in their teaching, but there 
w r as nothing of the true God and the Messiah. Even 
in Rome, the husband and father exercised a cruel 
supremacy over the wife and child to the taking of 
life ; the defective child might be thrown out as so- 
cial waste. We hear much of the ideal philosophy 
of Plato and the Socratic method of questioning. 
Aristotle, to whom modern education is so greatly 
indebted, gave morals a subordinate place in his 



216 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 

ethics and treated woman as dwarfed man. To-day, 
by the influence of Christian teaching, it is seen that 
all are susceptible of education, and if a cause is to 
be carried, a submerged class or a degraded race to 
be elevated, or a nation to be born in a day, edu- 
cation is invoked. So greatly has its force recently 
multiplied that 1870 is said to mark a new epoch. 
Vast sums of money are expended for it, and its 
literature has increased without parallel. But no 
human treatise on education equals the Bible; all 
there is of merit elsewhere is contained in it; all 
principles and methods must be tested by it. All 
who would elevate mankind emphasize high aims ; 
" Excelsior " is their motto. Much is made of Emer- 
son's advice — " Hitch your wagon to a star." But 
the Scriptures bid us aim above all stars, and take 
hold on the throne of God. In physical education, 
man's body is to become the temple of the living 
God, his intellect is to think the thoughts of God, 
and his spirit to awake in the divine likeness. No 
race presents such an illustration of the power of 
education as the Hebrew, which amid whatever envi- 
ronment, civil or religious, to this day preserves its 
distinct characteristics; the covenants made with 
them by the Almighty included posterity ;■ the conse- 
cration of the child was to be marked by a special 
sign, and his inquiries in regard to observances and 
symbols were to be answered whether at home or by 
the way. But this careful nurture was so perverted 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESSES. 217 

that when the Messiah, foretold by their prophets 
and emphasized by the instruction in their home and 
church, came among them and gave unmistakable 
signs of his presence, they knew him not. The 
obligations imposed on man by the divine law, either 
in the training of the child or otherwise, were not so 
much the acquisition of science, or wealth, or station, 
as conduct, conduct as piety toward God and duty to 
man; the training of man's moral and spiritual 
jiature was to be supreme. The revelations and the 
symbols used for the training of the infant race are 
marvellously adapted to the instruction of the infant 
mind. The coming of our Lord was to light every 
man ; form was nothing without the spirit. He 
taught as never man taught ; the fatherhood of God 
and the brotherhood of man were revealed as never 
before ; above the precepts of all teachers he declared, 
u Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, 
do ye even so to them." There was to be no mediator 
between God and man save the Son, Jesus Christ 
The prophetic symbols and promises were fulfilled : 
the Lamb was in verity slain, the innocent for the 
guilty ; thus the way of pardon was opened ; by faith 
in him the sense of unforgiven sins could be removed; 
and no man, woman, or child in the two thousand 
years since who has sought offered pardon has failed 
of relief. Infinite aid was offered to make the effort 
of every one effectual ; faithful endeavor, however 
short-coming, was assured of final triumph. The 



218 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 

doctrine of immortality was brought to light, and 
the ground of man's faith in it made clear by Christ's 
resurrection and ascension. His offer of salvation 
was made to all without distinction of sex, or age, or 
other conditions. 

The scientific agnostic, when he has exhausted his 
assignment of the elements of human nature to the 
category of industry and to the category of his self- 
protection and the like, finds a residuum looking to 
worship, and has begun to assign these elements 
which he finds universal in man's nature to the cate- 
gory of religion, and when he has done this he must, 
to give man a complete education — that is, to make 
the most of him — and to be consistent, provide for the 
training of these elements or for religious education. 

When the Educational Commission connected with 
the Japanese Embassy-extraordinary to our country 
was puzzled by the part they saw women taking as 
teachers and pupils in our schools, apparently no 
explanation received by them was so satisfactory as 
the statement that according to our religion the pro- 
vision of salvation was through an atoning Saviour,, 
the same for man and woman. He died for her as 
well as for man ; her soul in his sight was equal to 
that of man, and, therefore, opportunity for prepa- 
ration was required by her as well as by man. The 
institutions which the old dispensation had indicated 
were founded in man's nature and the divine order ; 
the family and the State were sanctified anew. Thirty 



ANNIVEESAB Y ADDEESSES. 21 9 

of the thirty -three years of Christ's short life were given 
in faithful service to his father and mother that he 
might teach the importance of the family. The 
child he took in his arms and blessed, and he rebuked 
the conceit of those older by declaring that they must 
become as little children in their humility, confidence, 
and teachableness. He taught the duty of obedience 
to civil law even when perverted; he wrought a 
miracle to pay tribute to the wicked Csesar. In 
obedience to his command, his followers went forth 
to educate the world in his doctrine by voice and 
pen, and the witness of effectual aid was given by 
Pentecostal outpouring of the spirit. The new testa- 
ment of his- grace was closed with the inspired words 
of his disciples. The canon of the Scriptures was 
completed. The ups and downs of education during 
the epoch of the gospel and the epoch of the Refor- 
mation would be found related as cause to effect in 
the rise and fall of empires. 

Presbyterian conceptions of God and man are so 
adapted to human development and so require it 
that, when in these historic periods they approach 
nearest to supremacy in their direction of human 
thought, there is to be found, as a legitimate result in 
their direction of man's training, the best education 
whether a man is considered individually or socially. 
The assumption of worldly power by the bishops of 
Pome and Constantinople covered a multitude of 
sins, and by their compromises with paganism intro- 



220 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 

duced many of the worst evils of pagan education 
into the instruction given under their authority.. 
Teachers of a pure gospel depended upon their per- 
sonal influence ; the schools of the early fathers cul- 
minated in the instruction at Alexandria; of the 
four great fathers of the Latin Church, Ambrose,, 
Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory, each has exerted a 
great educative influence down to our time, but none- 
of them a greater in his day or since than Augustine,, 
whose views in regard to fundamental doctrines so 
nearly agree with those of the Presbyterian Churches. 
For a long period the trivium and quadriviuin 
reigned supreme in higher courses of study. 

The school of the castle arose over against the- 
monastery ; great teachers appeared, and under their 
influence, universities sprang into existence and began 
to exert a power of their owm upon the course of in- 
struction ; the fall of Constantinople sent the teachers 
of Greek philosophy throughout Europe; and the 
Renaissance, glorified by the poetry of Dante and 
the art of Michael Angelo and Raphael, brought in 
the Reformation of Luther, a synonym for education,, 
in which appear Melancthon and Erasmus and others 
— a splendid galaxy of names. The Roman Catholic 
Church responded to the influences of the Reforma- 
tion with the schools of the Jesuits, which Pascal de- 
clared, "taught that the end justifies the means."* 
Within the Roman Catholic Church, the brothers of 
Port Royal made a splendid attempt to purify the- 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESSES. 221 

faith and practice of the church. Fenelon was a 
type of their teachers. The Burger Schools did an 
important work. 

Knox, in Scotland through the Kirk, organized a 
system of education which has kept Scotland in the 
front to this day. In the Netherlands, all the people 
w^re reading the Bible in the vernacular six years 
before Luther's translation was completed ; Calvin, in 
addition to working out his great system of doctrines, 
was a teacher, and organized education in Geneva. 
So far as his doctrines were accepted, the churches 
favored education. For four centuries before the 
Westminster Assembly, the Universities of Oxford 
and Cambridge admitted to their privileges all Eng- 
lishmen save Dissenters. Every appearance of the 
Bible in connection with instruction was a sign of 
human purification and elevation. Its translation 
by Wycliffe, Coverdale, and Luther began to pervade 
the philosophies accepted in the schools, and the 
principles of conduct in common life. In teaching 
its doctrine of man and God, martyrs multiplied. 

Out of the education thus afforded, profoundly 
studying the struggle of man with the evils of sin, 
the members of the Westminster Assembly came to 
their great task, and were enabled to set aside the 
false ideas and practices — the subterfuges regarding 
man and the superstitions regarding God — and in treat- 
ing these great fundamental facts came back from all 
the wanderings of human deceit and speculation to 



222 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 

the simplicity of the truth, and solemnly declared, 
" The Word of God, which is contained in the Scrip- 
tures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only 
rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him." 
From these Scriptures they are enabled to affirm that 
" Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy 
Him forever; " thus in the simplest terms to embody 
this great truth which no human philosophy has 
been able to invalidate in its study of man's destiny. 
All worship but that of the one living and true God 
is swept away. Man's triumphant attainment in 
righteousness is not found in any self-perfectability, 
as announced by Rousseau ; but " Effectual calling is 
the work of God's Spirit ; whereby, convincing us of 
our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the 
knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, He 
doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, 
freely offered to us in the Gospel." The door is 
opened to infinite possibilities ; man's fear of a way 
closed by sin and of his own failure of accomplish- 
ment are both overcome ; he is taught by the Spirit 
and led by it to the use of his powers for new and 
holy ends; nothing which he can do for himself is 
done for him. We can see how these doctrines in 
their application to all human activities include what 
is described by the term " education," and where in 
the exercise of human responsibility there is* room 
for differences of opinion. 

We should never forget that the Westminster As- 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESSES. 223 

sembly did its work during four years of the troubled 
period of the Long Parliament ; royalty going to the 
gallows and manhood coming to sovereignty. Should 
we look in upon the Assembly, we should recognize 
the influence of the Presbyterian demand for a 
learned and godly ministry, and that the form of 
Presbyterian Church government had favored their 
selection in the preparation of so many of its mem- 
bers for their duties. Perchance, we look in when 
the Committee on the Catechism reported to the 
•Committee of the Whole that they failed to agree 
upon a satisfactory answer to the question — " What is 
-God ? " and Gillespie, the youngest member, is called 
upon to lead in prayer for the special aid of the Di- 
vine Spirit, and when he began with the words, " 
God, who art a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchange- 
able in thy being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, 
goodness, and truth," the body already began to feel 
"that the desired answer was sent. We should be 
convinced that the great Assembly had been taught 
in the Scriptures and had learned the doctrine of 
prayer, and enjoyed the spiritual benefit of its con- 
stant observance. Thus they were enabled to em- 
hody in human expression this Bible view of the 
processes of salvation — pre-eminently educational. 
Shortly, the reaction began in England, and Presby- 
terians to the number of one hundred and forty were 
expelled from Parliament, and England waited two 
centuries for her great educational revival. 



224 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 

Comenius, the great Moravian Bishop, lifted up a 
marvellous light, which for a time illumined tha 
principles and methods of education which he would 
adapt to the several periods of man's growth. He 
would use the object or the picture in connection 
with the word, and thus lead the thought through 
the senses up to abstract reasoning ; he would educate^ 
every boy and girl and thus prepare for a Church 
united and universal, and for nations fit for respon- 
sibility in secular affairs; he would have brought 
education back to biblical methods ; he would hava 
the mother school in every family for every child 
until six, urged prayer for it before it was born, and 
rebuked any slight of it by its mother. Neither the 
farming-out of infancy nor the making of an exhi- 
bition of it for the gratification of parental pride or 
the admiration of friends found any favor with him ; 
he emphasized the idea that the Bible not only gives 
the right view of the child but of the family in 
which it is placed, and enforced its integrity and 
purity. Gould his scheme have been adopted hj 
England, as desired by Milton and Hartlib, or had 
he come to our own Harvard, as suggested, and car- 
ried out his plans, we should to-day have been im- 
measurably in advance of where we are ; but, unfortu- 
nately, he was soon forgotten, and the old, unnatural, 
abstract methods for elementary instruction remained, 
and generations have suffered from the consequences. 

We must remember that other denominations so far 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESSES. 225 

as they accept the Calvinistic action of the West- 
minster Assembly share with Presbyterian Churches 
the results of its influences on education. 

In the movement of Presbyterians from the old to 
the new world, they brought with them not only 
their notion of Christian doctrine, but also the prin- 
ciples and customs of education which prevailed in 
the country from which they came. There was 
among them a general admission of the importance 
of child training and that parents had special obliga- 
tions in this regard. We cannot pause to trace their 
diversities. We may say there was a great agree- 
ment that the offer of salvation should be extended 
to every one, and therefore there should be provided 
for each so much of instruction as would enable him 
to avail himself of the means of salvation. We first 
find the term " free school " in the action of the East 
India Company in the early days of the Jamestown 
settlement. But Virginia waited until our own day 
for the establishment of free universal education after 
the plan that Jefferson announced a century before 
its realization. In no colony did Presbyterians so 
prevail as to enforce their special ideas of education. 

Mather declared that of the immigrants arriving 
in New England up to three years before the West- 
minster Assembly, about one-fifth were Presbyterians. 
Wherever they settled, the schoolhouse was opened 
beside the church — so much the boast in American 
history. The learned and devout clergy shared in 

15 



226 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 

every hardship and braved every peril of the wilder- 
ness and savage. Their sermons stimulated the study 
of the Bible, led the reflections of the sturdy men and 
women — of the women as they eared for their homes, 
and the men as they hewed down the forest and stood 
guard against the savage, and thus they awakened 
the thought, formed the minds, and built the charac- 
ters of those who initiated, defined, defended, and con- 
firmed our liberties. x 

The course of events in America, to which the utter- 
ances of the Westminster Assembly have constantly 
contributed through the Puritan and Covenanter, has 
resulted so that the form of organization and direc- 
tion of education are divided in the main between 
the Church and the State; first, the church or churches 
charged with the preservation of the oracles of God 
acknowledge the duty of training man therein as the 
means of saving his soul ; second, the State for its own 
preservation assumes the responsibility of preparing 
man to discharge his duty as a citizen or as an officer 
when called to rule over his fellows. Thus the coun- 
try receives whatever advantage may arise from their 
competition in excellence or public favor. Compar- 
ing their buildings and equipment, their text-books 
and teachers, their methods of instruction and discip- 
line, we find those of Church and State much the 
same. 

The story of the efforts of Presbyterian Churches 
in America to found institutions of learning would 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESSES. 227 

furnish a romantic chapter in educational history. 
Eev. William Tennent, a man of learning and devout 
piety, in 1726, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, twenty 
miles north of Philadelphia, opened a school for the 
better training of young men for the ministry. Rev. 
George Whitfield, the distinguished evangelist, who 
shared with Tennent the desire to elevate the charac- 
ter of the clergy and increase the spirituality of the 
churches, said after a visit, "The place where the 
young men study is called in contempt a ' Log Col- 
lege.' " u It was about twenty feet long and near as 
many broad." " The logs were hewn for it on the 
spot." From this humble beginning what vast 
consequences followed to Presbyterian education ? 
Thence came Princeton, preparing its great array 
of officers for the churches and for civil duties. In 
spite of the limitations and distresses of poverty, the 
hardships of pioneer life, multiplied by the threaten- 
ing savagery of the Indian, the graduates of Princeton 
went out to found other like institutions in the wil- 
derness, Smith to establish Prince Edward Academy, 
which in the year of American Independence became 
Hampden-Sidney College, named in honor of those 
defenders of liberty; Graham laid the foundations 
of Liberty Hall. The State of Virginia voted George 
Washington one hundred improvement bonds as a 
token of its gratitude for his eminent services. These 
bonds he refused to appropriate to his own use and 
donated them to Liberty Hall, which thereupon en- 



228 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 

tered upon its enlarged sphere as Washington Col- 
lege, now Washington and Lee University. The 
efforts of McMillan in Western Pennsylvania resulted 
in Jefferson College. Doak, a native of Virginia, 
with his Princeton diploma, carrying the books for 
his library on horseback across the mountains, settled 
on the Holston before that territory was transferred 
from North Carolina and constituted a part of Ten- 
nessee, and there established Washington College, 
which contends with Transylvania for recognition as 
the first college opened in the Mississippi Valley. 
The sturdy Scotch-Irish of North Carolina are speci- 
ally honored for the defense of their homes in the 
Revolutionary struggle and for the Mecklenburg De- 
claration ; for most of their preparation they were 
indebted to a learned and devout ministry who in- 
structed them in their homes or in various academies 
established by their self-sacrificing efforts. 

Presbyterian ministers shared with Puritans in 
New England in administering the public school 
system. They did their share in founding academies 
and in establishing the early colleges — Yale, Har- 
vard, Brown, Princeton, Dartmouth, and others, and 
the churches and presbyteries sustained them in their 
efforts. The insertion in the Ordinance of 1787 of 
the clause enforcing the duty of education and pro- 
viding the means for it in the gift of the sixteenth 
section of land for common schools and two town- 
ships for universities, is credited to Manasseh Cutler, 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESSES. 229 

another Calvinistic clergyman. Rev. Samuel Wood, 
of Boscawen, New Hampshire, in addition to his in- 
structive labors in the pulpit, fitted eighty young 
men for college, including Daniel and Ezekiel Web- 
ster, besides teaching many students in theology. 
What these learned and devout ministers did for 
education up to the inauguration of our Constitu- 
tional Government, their successors in the genera- 
tions following have done for the vast regions west, 
the Mississippi Valley, the Rocky Mountain Regions, 
and the Pacific Slope. They have been pre-eminently 
the leaders holding aloft the Stars and Stripes and 
the Banner of the Cross, planting the church and the 
school. Dr. Whitman, a Presbyterian, in honor of 
whose memory a college is now erected, by his peril- 
ous ride in midwinter across the mountains, and 
plains, and frozen rivers, through the deep snows 
and the blinding storms, and by leading in return a 
train of immigrants, saved to our flag an empire on 
the Pacific. Nor has the chapter of these great heroes 
♦ended. Our own generation is blest with a mission- 
ary who in the variety and vastness of his labors and 
in their influence upon education surpasses them all, 
^and our Church has properly manifested its apprecia- 
tion of this fact by his elevation to the most honor- 
able office in its gift. 

We must not overlook the educating influence of 
the Church itself upon its own members. A careful 
statement indicates that Americans have so improved 



230 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 

their liberty of worship that there are among us fifty 
sects, and a looser authority counts a hundred. 

This is the day of new organizations, clubs, and 
societies almost bevond number, with all sorts of ob~ 
jects and of every name, for men, women, and chil- 
dren. But man has never devised any organization 
equal to the Church in its educating and uplifting- 
power. This is the form selected by our Lord for his 
followers, through which they were to disciple the 
world; in their great differences of doctrine and 
form of worship, there will be found corresponding 
differences in educating power. There are still those 
who would cling to the union of Church and State ; 
those who affirm that ignorance is the mother of de- 
votion ; that the Bible is not for common believers ; 
that education is for the few ; that the sermon should 
count for little ; and others that the preacher should 
lift up his voice without preparation and speak as he- 
is moved ; others would prescribe forms to be followed 
so exactly that they may all be gone through with- 
out either interest or heart on the part of hearer or 
preacher. The adherents of each will claim superi- 
ority for their own ; we would disparage none. 

Presbyterians by universal consent stand for intel- 
ligence. This standing has been the occasion for 
criticism, but we notice as time goes on objection! 
gives way to approval. Presbyterians believe that 
not only their doctrine but their form of worship and 
polity find authority in the primitive church. Pres- 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESSES. 231 

byterians always encourage the reverent use of reason,, 
not its diseased, unbalanced, or insane use, destructive 
of reason itself, any more than they encourage that 
misuse of the body which brings disease and death. 
They invite to membership all believers who accept 
Christ as their Saviour, and are ready to be baptized 
in his name, and to conform their lives to his pre- 
cepts. They hold to the perseverance of all true be- 
lievers and make no provision in their theories for 
lapses in practice. They contemplate no giving of 
youth to the sowing of wild oats. Parents indicate- 
their acceptance of the old and new covenant by 
bringing their children to baptism, thus consecrating- 
them in infancy and promising to train them for the 
service of the Lord, in which all their brethren agree- 
to join, confirming their promise by public sign. 
Shortcomings in these covenanted duties are most 
disastrous. Here may be found the greatest defects in 
the education practised by the Presbyterian Churches. 
The Church thus constituted, what association for 
the sake of companionship can equal it ? Or for re- 
form of any condition of evil, intemperance, impurity,, 
dishonesty in fulfilling private or public trusts, what 
can invoke stronger motives ? Is any improvement 
proposed, intellectual, moral, social, civil, or spiritual, 
what combination is like it in fitness or effectiveness T 
What observances could be better adapted to promote 
perpetuity of ideas and activity than its sacraments,, 
its seasons of prayer, and its Sabbaths set apart from 



232 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 

secular pursuits to worship and rest, to instruction, 
and study of the Bible and Catechism in the Sabbath- 
school and at home? What human combination 
has in view such an end, perfection in holiness, sal- 
Tation from sin, the glories of immortality ? Or where 
is any other association accorded such a leader, one 
who has left behind the example of a perfect life, 
who has overcome death and the grave and ascended 
on high, and who invites all his followers to share 
with him the beatitudes of his glory ? To make all 
this effective, there is the under-shepherd required 
Idj Presbyterians to be learned and godly, ready to 
lead, to warn and exhort, with all humility, patience, 
and tenderness. The Presbyterian Church with its 
learned and godly ministry is the school of schools 
for all its members in all their duties. By it the 
family is set apart and its members instructed ; 
"wisdom in entering upon its obligations and loving 
fidelity in their discharge, enforced that it may not 
so often end in divorce ; divine precepts brought to 
bear upon the duty of each member ; the father and 
mother, the very priest and priestess, daily worship- 
ping at the altar of the home church ; and all parents 
and children under the instruction of the Church 
vieing with each other in the beauty and loving 
fidelity of their lives — what a protection and inspira- 
tion is thus thrown around the family circle, making 
the devout home the very threshold of heaven ! 
In the Church, too, every member, every worshipper 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESSES. 233 

is instructed in his civil duties ; he hears the voice 
of the divine oracles; the moral law is laid upon his 
conscience; his patriotism is lighted by a divine 
flame, and he is stimulated to that eternal vigilance 
which is the price of liberty. The equality of church 
membership prepares him for the equality of citizen- 
ship, and the practice of the principle of representa- 
tion in Session, Presbytery, and Synod in spiritual 
affairs prepares for its application in affairs of the 
State. If he is called to rule, he should, like all be- 
lievers, rule in the fear of God. All Presbvterian 
church officers, including the pastor, are called by 
the voice of the people ; the parity of the clergy is 
fixed ; the descent of authority by the laying on of 
.hands comes not by the bishop, who assumes author- 
ity over his brethren of the clergy, but through the 
chosen member of the Presbytery. 

In founding institutions of their own, academies, 
colleges, and seminaries, the most Presbyterians seek 
formally of the State is the charter necessary for 
security ; and this they ask not formally to churches 
but to individuals who are their members. Turning 
from the Log College, what a triumphant result is 
presented ! 

The Commissioner of Education, Dr. W. T. Harris, 
reports now sustained by Presbyterian Churches, in- 
cluding the Cumberland and the Northern and 
Southern Divisions, 102 academies attended by 4922 
students, or 2523 males and 2399 females ; with 



234 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 

60,206 volumes in their libraries ; and grounds and 
buildings valued at $1,864,500, with an annual in- 
come of $305,110 ; with 54 colleges for men, or for 
men and women, with an attendance in the prepara- 
tory departments of 3815, or males 2360 and females- 
1455 ; in their college classes, 4145, or males 3255 
and females 890 ; or a total in these institutions en- 
joying preparatory and college instruction of 7760 r 
of whom 5615 are men and 2345 are women, with 
312,481 volumes in their libraries, and grounds and 
buildings valued at $5,779,816, and controlling pro- 
ductive funds to the amount of $5,133,295, and hav- 
ing an annual income of $469,766. Of colleges for 
women alone there are 25, with an attendance of 300 
in the elementary departments, of 846 in the prepara- 
tory, and 1618 in the college classes; or a total at- 
tendance of 3047, w 7 ith 42,184 volumes in their libra- 
ries ; and grounds and buildings valued at $l,596,075 r 
with an annual income of $337,210. These three 
divisions of the Presbyterian Church maintain twenty 
theological seminaries, with 1341 young men in at- 
tendance, and 293,738 volumes in their libraries, and 
having grounds and buildings valued at $2,755,527,. 
and productive funds amounting to $6,626,425. Here 
is a grand total of 17,070 students in attendance; 
708,609 volumes in libraries ; $11,995,918 in build- 
ings and grounds; $11,759,620 in productive funds, 
and having an annual income in colleges and acad- 
emies of $1,112,081. 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESSES. 235 

Our congratulations on this occasion may not be 
the less helpful if sometimes admonitory. Grateful 
and encouraged as we should be as we compare the 
above educational work of Presbyterian Churches 
with the beginning at the Log College, we shall be 
compelled in view of the large wealth controlled by 
Presbyterians and the large share that they must 
bave given of the $198,044,141, reported by the Bu- 
reau of Education, bestowed upon education since 
1870, to conclude that a great part of their gifts has 
been bestowed upon other institutions than those 
directed by Presbyterian agencies, and that they 
have not given to their own institutions as they have 
in other directions. 

There can be no question of the obligation of Pres- 
byterian Churches to maintain the purity and effici- 
ency of the instruction under their own control. We 
have seen how free from technical and formal restric- 
tions is the admission to Presbyterian membership. 
But in considering the relation of Presbyterian 
Churches to education, we should not fail to observe 
the care with which they call the teacher or preacher. 
His personal piety, attainments, and beliefs must 
pass the scrutiny of his Session and be approved by 
the Presbytery. When commissioned, he is duly 
authorized to teach Presbyterian doctrines, and he is 
held by every obligation to preach no other. In as- 
suming the responsibility of his commission, the 
churches allow the largest liberty of inquiry, but in 



236 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 

accordance with principles most common in all the 
affairs of men, either religious or secular, they hold 
the teacher or preacher responsible to the obligations 
which he has assumed. If he reaches views essen- 
tially contrary to Presbyterian doctrine, he may have 
the largest liberty in declaring them when he is no 
longer under their commission and pay. A man of 
the common sense of honor, honesty, and fidelity 
could hardly propose for himself a different course. 
Agnostics may sneer at the application of this princi- 
ple as narrow, but would they commission and pay 
persons to preach Presbyterianism ? Can an officer 
commissioned in the service of his country fight un- 
der a hostile banner without committing treason? 
Persons should not assume to be religious teachers 
who have no experience of religious faith. Too often 
Americans have been beguiled into error under Ger- 
man instruction, and on account of their opportuni- 
ties for intellectual culture have been accepted as 
worthy teachers in American institutions. It is due 
to those who give money for Presbyterian purposes 
and those who seek Presbyterian instruction that 
they should not be deceived. Sometimes there is a 
sentiment which would be satisfied with good charac- 
ter without intellectual attainments, with the goody- 
good as teacher or minister. In other cases, in this 
day of special care of methods and professional skill, 
the mistake is made of requiring no preparation in 
method. It may be well demanded that the religious 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESSES. 237 

teacher should excel not only in character and scholar- 
ship, but in mastery of methods. He has before him 
the example of the great teacher whose method was 
never equalled by Socrates or any other man. Pres- 
byterians may well be cautious how they treat the 
Bible in all their instruction; frivolous questions 
about it should be dismissed : neither should it be 
regarded with superstition. The superiority of its 
antiquity, piety, and moral sentiments may well be 
appreciated ; and, above all, it should be accepted as 
the Word of God, as the finality in teaching the 
nature of God and man and their relations. Studies 
about the Bible may be useful, but they should not 
take the place of the study of the Bible itself. It 
must be admitted there has been here and there a 
singular growth of indifference to Bible instruction 
in our higher institutions of learning. In the relig- 
ious college and academy it has been too often treated 
in a manner to deprive its study of all interest and 
enthusiasm. Indeed, the president of a college con- 
nected with another religious body when asked if the 
Bible was used in his course, replied, " No," and that 
he hoped that it never w T ould be. Time was when it 
was carefully studied in all higher institutions such 
as Harvard and Princeton. 

The Southern branch of our Church has excelled 
in its restoration to college use, and finds the Bible 
part of the course of greatest interest among students. 
The motives to excellence in our religious institutions 



238 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 

are sometimes thrown out of balance by a system of 
merit, which recognizes only brightness in scholar- 
ship and leaves out all account of fidelity and charac- 
ter. Our theological seminaries, while giving special 
attention to the study of the Hebrew and Greek, have 
too much neglected the English Bible. In this form 
of the Word, the minister will be called upon speci- 
ally to wield the Sword of the Spirit. Too often the 
student coming througli all the course of our religious 
training finds himself most imperfectly grounded in 
the relation of fundamental truths to the administra- 
tion of civil affairs or to the current practical ques- 
tions of the day. 

Historians have not ceased to describe the educat- 
ing power of Presbyterian doctrine and forms of 
worship in shaping the institutions of our country. 
Tor the American Presbyterian, education should be 
as universal as the responsibilities of citizenship. 
Therefore, having fixed the separation of Church and 
State, the universal and advanced education required 
to guarantee the intelligence necessary to a free State, 
both by religious and civil considerations, is intrusted 
to the State. Here, too, the Bible should be the test 
of any scheme of instruction. 

The formal action of the State in education in 
ancient history appears only here and there; and 
then in the main for special purposes or for limited 
classes, as is illustrated in the instruction of which 
we catch glimpses in Assyria and Egypt, Greece and 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESSES. 239 

Home. Later this power and duty only dawned here 
and there upon a royal mind, as upon that of Alfred, 
or Charlemagne, or Frederick, who found he could 
make his people more powerful in array against his 
enemies by training officers, and caught the idea 
that by training teachers he could multiply the 
effectiveness of his citizens, and so established nor- 
mal schools. Luther declared that it was as much 
the duty of the magistrate to establish schools for the 
instruction of youth as to build bridges and make 
roads. The undertaking of these duties by the State 
justifies itself to reason, and more than any other 
cause has in recent time given great impulse to edu- 
cational progress. If the State for self-protection must 
levy taxes and exert its power to preserve order and 
punish murder, it can with equal right levy taxes 
and educate its people for the prevention of crime. 
There follows logically the duty of applying the best 
principles and methods, guarding the qualification 
of teachers, supplying equipments, and conducting 
supervision. Our public school system originated 
in Puritan New England, where school and church, 
and State and church were so long one. Before they 
were separated, schools were established by civil au- 
thor^ including every child, so that each one might 
be able to read so much of the statute as to be de- 
terred from its violation, and so much of the Scrip- 
ture as to be enabled to resist Satan. In different 
States, the system of public instruction has come to 



240 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 

embrace all grades from the kindergarten to the 
university. The relation of Presbyterian Churches 
to education by the State is not formal, but like their 
relation to civil affairs in other respects, through their 
members sharing in its direction and paying taxes for 
its support, and through their youth who enjoy its 
privileges. To judge how much this may be, we 
may gain some idea by reflecting that if one child 
in a family is normal, he may have free all education 
to which he aspires, even to that in the university. 
Is another blind, or deaf, or feeble-minded, the State 
offers the needed instruction without cost. 

How many Presbyterian youth attend this element- 
ary or secondary public instruction it is impossible 
to estimate with accuracy. 

From a religious census of the State universities 
and of the Presbyterian colleges, edited by Francis 
W. Kelsej^, Esq., we have the significant statement 
that " in seventeen State universities there were en- 
rolled 2434 Presbyterian students, against 2388, th& 
total attendance in the thirty-seven colleges under 
the auspices of our churches." He adds, " in view of 
present tendencies that are unmistakable, is it not 
likely that in twenty-five years the majority of lay- 
men in the Presbyterian Church who have enjoyed 
the advantages of higher education, laymen who 
will be charged with the administration of its mater- 
ial interests and will be exerting an influence in 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESSES. 241 

shaping its policy, will be laymen who have never 
entered the door of a Presbyterian college ? " 

Here is a responsibility which Presbyterian Churches- 
bear to education that must be met without delay. 
No one can object to their making their own institu- 
tions more effective, or to their carrying to success 
the movement already commenced of furnishing a 
Presbyterian house in connection with each State 
university, where Presbyterian students may enjoy 
Presbyterian association and worship, and instruction 
in Presbyterian doctrine and polity. But there re- 
mains still the adjustment of religious instruction 
to the entire public system of education. No edu- 
cational question of the day is more important.. 
We are fully assured that the separation of 
Church and State is to the advantage of each and 
of the individual. Presbyterians have no question 
of their duty to each. They have only to be as- 
sured there is no antagonism and to think out 
clearly for themselves and others the line of harmon- 
ious action. There is a sentiment that would carry 
this separation to the extent that civil administration 
must be not only non-sectarian, but positively hostile 
to religion. This sentiment has apparently resulted 
in the declaration of a clergyman or a judge here* 
and there, who has been ready to run before he is 
called, " that the reading of the Bible must be ex- 
cluded from public instruction." Is it clear that the- 
best book is the first book to be excluded from public 

16 



242 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 

schools? that the book most helpful to American 
youth is the one they are forbidden to use? the book 
out of whose influence have come our free institu- 
tions and their defense, the book whose presence or 
absence has marked the ebb and flow in education, 
the rise and fall of nations ? No Presbyterian will 
ask that his creed, as distinguished from others, 
shall be taught by the public instructor, but in com- 
mon with all evangelical believers he holds that the 
morals of the American State, upon which it depends 
for order and peace, are in substance the same as the 
morals of the Bible. On all hands it will be agreed 
that nothing is more essential in education than 
moral training. The body may be strengthened and 
the intellect sharpened only to make their possessor 
a deadly foe to himself and to his fellows. The 
power of moral direction — the right choice— is most 
important to be cultivated. Choices right in effect 
ivill be made by different persons from different 
motives. In man's intercourse with his fellow they 
may be determined by conditions under the control 
of the State, or they may be controlled by a desire to 
obey the divine command. Two persons drawing 
their motives from these two widely different consid- 
*€rations may act the same on all questions affecting 
oach other's lives and property; may live in har- 
mony and be good citizens ; the morals of each traced 
to their source will be found to come from the Bible ; 
now may they not both look at the Bible as they look 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESSES. 243 

at life, and as they disagree as to the religion of life 
and agree as to the wisdom and necessity of its mor- 
als, may they not see with equal clearness that 
they can disagree as to the religion of the Bible 
and accept its morals, and for the purpose of its 
morals unite in its use as they unite in the uses 
of life ? Much in this question depends upon the 
good temper of all concerned; the qualification of 
the teacher is a most important factor. It is interest- 
ing to know that there has been made a book of 
selections from the Bible satisfactory to the committee, 
representing the Agnostic, the Jew, the Protestant, 
and the Catholic. 

The relation of these questions to provisions of the 
National Constitution is most intimate. The great- 
sentiment of the country is in favor of the separation 
of ecclesiastical from civil affairs. But of this separa- 
tion there is no guarantee in the National Constitu- 
tion. Indeed, the only provision in that instrument 
in regard to religion is that Congress shall not enact 
any law establishing a religion or exclude a person 
from office on account of religious belief, and recog- 
nizing the Christian Sabbath, and the date of tho 
year of our Lord, and the solemnity of oaths. All 
powers or rights not specifically granted to the nation 
are reserved to the people of the States. It is in the 
opinion of the people of each State, therefore, to pro- 
vide enactments of their own choice with regard to 
religion. So one State after another has been very 



244 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 

exact in providing in its Constitution that its Legis- 
lature shall not appropriate money for the support 
of religion ; but there is nothing in the National Con- 
stitution to prevent any State from reversing its pres- 
ent decision, and the State of Utah might establish 
Mormonism as its religion and turn the entire ma- 
chinery of public instruction to the education of its 
youth in Mormon doctrines. 

What a rich legacy our fathers left us in that 
structure of our Government which assures liberty 
of conscience, and which permits the supremacy 
neither of the Church over the State nor the State 
over the Church. But w T ith this great inheritance 
w r e have something to do. We must settle aright for 
ourselves and for our posterity the relation of the 
Bible to education under the direction of the State. 
One thing we can do without question from any 
quarter, and that is make Bible instruction in col- 
leges under religious control so superior in interest 
and results that all will w r ant the Bible in their 
courses of study. 

Presbyterian Churches acknowledge other respon- 
sibilities to education beyond what may be accom- 
plished by their doctrines and their forms of worship 
within themselves. For the purpose of aiding feeble 
churches and carrying the Gospel to those not reached 
by it in our own and other lands, this our body, or 
division, has organized eight Boards, each educative 
or promotive of education in its special way. I wish 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESSES. 245 

we might focus their educative power and bring it to 
bear on our hearts. If it is true that only one-seventh 
of our churches contribute to the work of all the 
Boards, what a privilege, what a means of grace the 
other six-sevenths of our churches fail to improve! 

Is a worshipper ever annoyed by his pastor's an- 
nouncing the day for receiving gifts to this or that 
Board of the Church, let him reflect that this is no 
begging, that this is an offer of an opportunity for 
using with greater effect his influence and means 
which he has consecrated to the Master. Neither one 
member nor one church can take into view all con- 
ditions or demands for Christian effort ; but by asso- 
ciation this may be accomplished. In the operations 
of these Boards, every church member may have a 
voice, as he has in his Session, Presbytery, Synod, 
and the Assembly; they make present this oppor- 
tunity for the gifts, prayers, and personal influence 
of every worshipper. The men who administer these 
Boards are carefully selected for their ability, piety, 
trustworthiness and special fitness, and their opera- 
tions are brought before all Presbyteries and Synods 
and carefully revised annually by the General As- 
sembly. In connection with these Boards, woman 
finds her appropriate sphere and fills it with an effici- 
ency sealed with divine approval and has added 
mightily to the educative work of the churches. 
Each Board will appear before Assembly with its 
own full report ; but we cannot appreciate the pres- 



246 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 

ent relation of this, our body, of Presbyterian Churches 
to education and leave out all allusion to them here. 
Once Presbyterians may have suffered like other de- 
nominations from the theory that missions only re- 
quired preaching — the mistaken theory under which 
a great missionary secretary closed so many mission 
schools ; but that day, thank God, has passed. It is 
not now doubted that teaching and training in the 
life of Christ is an essential part of the preaching of 
the Gospel. Our two great organizations, the Home 
and the Foreign Boards, divide the world between 
them. As the Home Board adds churches to its 
forces, each should become a systematic contributor 
to all the Boards, and as the Home Board lifts up the 
cry, " Our country for Christ," the Foreign Board 
takes up the refrain, " Christ for the world." 

If American liberties are to be destroyed or Amer- 
ican Presbyterianism corrupted, it is to be done 
through the education of the young. In the future, 
as in the past, destruction may come by man's as- 
suming some unwarranted power over his fellow as 
a divine right ; it may be the divine right of wealth, 
or station, or labor, or some power devised for man's 
gratification. In the absence of the law, God's chosen 
people came nearest to destruction. Every nation 
has found its greatest peril in the greatest absence of 
the Divine Word. Our safety is the presence of its 
truths wrought by education into the hearts and 
illustrated in the lives of the American people. The 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESSES. 247 

Bible is the only safe guide for training in the right- 
eousness which exalteth a nation. What more sig- 
nificant sign of our peril and of the need of the Bible 
to enlighten the individual understanding than the 
declaration of a man dignified by a seat in the United 
States Senate to the effect that the Ten Command- 
ments have no place in American politics? 

As a nation we are especially charged with the 
xesponsibility of elevating degraded races, the African 
and the aborigine, and of receiving to our great 
privileges those not so highly favored. 

Is Hawaii, after being brought up from the degra- 
dation of paganism to the position of Christian civili- 
zation by the labors and sacrifices of American mis- 
sionaries, now to become a part of our domain — are 
the prophecies of this critical year to bring to us civil 
responsibilities for other people ? Let us remember 
we can have no assurance that we shall discharge 
them with success if the Bible is left out of our edu- 
cation. 

Nor are Presbyterian Churches unmindful of the 
influence in favor of education exerted by authors, 
teachers, agencies, institutions, or journals not form- 
ally under their control but devoted to instruction' 
in their doctrine. Even a catalogue of these agencies 
cannot be attempted. As we canvass this array of 
ihe educational forces of Presbyterian Churches, we 
exclaim, how fit, how well adapted to enlighten man- 
lind and to advance the Kingdom of Light and 



248 WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY. 

bring men to a knowledge of the Gospel, to save souls 
and to maintain a free Church in a free State ! No- 
where is there a lack of opportunity, or men, or meas- 
ures, the only deficiency — the only lack — is the sup- 
ply of means with which its membership has been 
so largely blessed. Did not their consecration in- 
clude their wealth as well as themselves ? Do they 
so cherish their gold and silver that they are unwill- 
ing to give of their superabundance to preserve the 
faith which their fathers died to maintain — the faith 
upon which depends their hope of immortality? 
Shall we surrender our birthright for a mess of pot- 
tage? Shall we hold the things of this world so 
tightly in our grasp that they can be bestowed for 
the benefit of others only when our hand is cold in 
death ! Shall not Presbyterian Churches rouse them- 
selves to this full responsibility for the education of 
the youth of to-day that they may go forth with a 
consecration never before witnessed, and thus use 
their inheritance of privilege -and means to prepare 
better and greater things for the magnificent century 
about to begin ? 



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